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The councillor laughed and said he didn’t know, and then said when it comes to his provincial ambitions, “I’ve always said if it wasn’t called in the spring, I’d have to reconsider ... Focus on the job at hand with Rob into the next (municipal) election.”

The brothers’ weekly radio show, The City, on Newstalk 1010 touched on all the regular Ford hallmarks.

They talked about football, hockey and Rob’s love of Baskin Robbins ice cream. They made a pitch for subways, attacked Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne, and spent a significant chunk of their two-hour program bashing the media, before wrapping up with half a dozen calls from admirers — including one from an out-of-town woman who declared the brothers were “a couple of wonderful teddy bears.”

As much attention remains fixed on the crack cocaine scandal unfolding out of City Hall, Ford spoke of his “very busy week,” where he was made to tackle “very important issues.” He talked about attending executive committee, meeting with the auditor general about Toronto community housing, holding a press conference about flooding on the Don Valley Parkway and about being briefed on the dilapidated Dufferin bridge.

The mayor went on a tangent against 18 city councillors currently in Vancouver for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities annual conference.

“Eighteen councillors flew out Thursday. You know, the same councillors, the same councillors said ‘oh you, know the city’s falling apart.’ Well where were they Thursday? Where were they Friday? You could shoot a cannon off at City Hall,” the mayor said.

Doug Ford chimed in: “Well, that’s what burns me up Rob. They’re the same councillors that are shouting and screaming, ‘There’s a crisis. The world’s coming to an end.’ And they’re out — but it’s not too much of a crisis, we’re gonna go stay in a five-star hotel. We’re gonna be drinking margaritas by the side of the pool.”

The mayor: “But you’re paying for it. The taxpayers are paying for it. They’re not paying for it.”

(Reached in Vancouver, councillor Adam Vaughan, who is a Ford critic, said the money was coming out of the city’s global travel budget, not constituency budgets and that every major mayor except Ford was there.) Ford had Stephen Buckley, the general manager of transportation, call into the show and also highlighted some recent and upcoming charity work. The mayor also revealed that he has replaced four of the six staffers who left his office amid the controversy.

“I’m really happy to say that on Friday I hired four more people. The media is saying three. We hired another one. So we have four new team members. They’re excited. They’re pumped up,” said Ford.

It’s been a little over two weeks since the Star reported two of its reporters had viewed a 90 second video clip of the mayor appearing to smoke crack cocaine and utter a homophobic slur. American gossip website Gawker also reported seeing the video. The Star later reported that Ford himself told senior aides not to worry about the footage being made public, because he knew where it is, according to sources.

Ford’s former chief of staff Mark Towhey went to Toronto Police, after the mayor’s operations and logistics director David Price — a longtime friend of the Ford family — told him: “Hypothetically,” if someone had told him where the video was, “What would we do?” sources say.

Ford has denied a video exists and said he does not use crack cocaine. Price has not responded to the allegations.

The Fords also went after the media during the radio show calling recent articles in the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star “gutter” journalism. Councillor Ford demanded the Star apologize for a report last week in which sources warned that email and phone records of former staffers were in danger after they were ordered destroyed.

City staff said the city had received no such request from the mayor's office and the Star has been unable to verify the allegation. Ford said that emails cannot be permanently deleted from the city server. The staffers in question resigned or were fired after the video scandal broke. The Star has requested the records for the staffers for the period after its story about the video was published.

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